Category: work

Still

Well, I hate to say it but I’m adjusting to the new schedule. It appears this week my rhythms are even adjusting. Today was the first day since I switched to the new shift that I didn’t come home utterly exhausted after the gym. I had a good workout but it felt more like it was supposed to.

So, I guess I’m gonna survive after all. I was beginning to have my doubts for sure. lol

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The project is finally picking up a little more speed. We are getting into the thick of things. If it weren’t for all the politics between depts it would be moving a whole lot faster. Next week, the training team for the developer is back to train us on phase 2 of the software. There is one more training phase in late May, then we are all on our own for the duration till we go live.

My dept is already whining about the money it’s costing to have the ops personnel (including myself) off the floor. I hope and pray we don’t get pulled off before the project is over. I can already see it taking more than 5 months that were allotted. Both of the project leaders are keen on me because I have such a broad knowledge of hardware, software, and policy. I’m glad as they’ll plead my case later on the chance the dept has to pick and choose who to leave on the team.

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Now that I appear to be adjusting, hopefully I’ll get some more blog posts in. I have plenty in my head just no time to sit down and type them out. Cooper is doing fine on the new schedule. Although, on the really early days I’ve gotten up he has taken to looking at me like, “what the hell are you doing up so early?”

Just

Well, it looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I appear to be adjusting a bit better to the new schedule. Instead of being exhausted every day or every other day, I’m up to every 3-4 days. lol Hey, I’ll take every improvement I can get.

This week has been better overall with timing and my rhythms being better. I am beginning to feel like I will survive this schedule after all.

The project itself is slowly picking up steam. Having got off to the slowest start in history, things are picking up speed now. The managers seem to be getting a better grasp on priorities and timelines.

Maybe, by the weekend I’ll actually feel like I’ve accomplished something useful.

Hope springs eternal…

Apparent

Apparently, I’m the only one that decided to be available to work on our project today. But, since I don’t have the authority to assign myself new tasks I was left tweaking several already completed tasks. On the way out yesterday, one of the project leads asked me if I could this, this, and this. She was clearly asking me to do it so she didn’t have to. Do they think me stupid? I can tell when I’m being given a shit assignment. lol I totally didn’t mind though. It took minutes to complete each one.

Apparently, I’m also the only one that kept notes about the day to day usage vs who was whining about what. So now everyone wants MY notes to brush up on. lol And to be clear here, I’m not bitching, I’m just being a dork. I like this sort of stuff so I’m content.

Apparently, I can keep a lot in my head off of one or two line item notes. Each line turned into 2 & 3 paragraphs of text when I started cleaning up my notes and condensing them into cohesive thoughts. What started as maybe 20 lines of notes ended up spread out over 24 paragraphs of documentation. Everyone keeps saying, ‘oh my god, how did you keep up with all that while it was going on?‘  Uh, um…well I listened for one. Two, since I already know the code, tech, and the purpose as a user I can pretty much tell you everything that needs to be accomplished and how to do it. Me thinks maybe I should be the project manager…

Apparently, the powers that be above me decided it was too much to ask us to clone and edit command codes from the old system to the new one. This was one of the parts I was eagerly looking forward to. I’m bummed they actually convinced the developer to do it for free.

Apparently, it’s Friday and I’m ready to get the hell out of here!

Have a good weekend all.

Survived v2.0

Ugh. So I have almost survived week two of my new day shift. I am seriously beginning to wonder if I’ll ever adapt. It’s been two weeks and my natural rhythm still hasn’t caught up. My sleep pattern has settled a bit so at least I’m getting to bed and asleep on time. I still seem to be almost exhausted by the time I get home at night. Wednesday this week I didn’t have an overly busy day at work but I was simply tired all day. I managed to get a good workout in but by the time I got home I could barely lift my eyes to eat and get Cooper settled. I finally let myself go to sleep around 10:30 and I passed out! Me, asleep at 10:30 pm!

The project has gotten off to a very slow start. It seems the project managers weren’t really prepared, had no idea what to expect, and are still catching up. It is incredibly frustrating to sit in a room with developers, IT employees from 3 depts, 2 project managers, and 2 other operations personal besides myself and feel like I’m the only one really getting it. And having to go over the same stuff several times because key personnel don’t always attend, certainly hasn’t helped keeps things moving along. Naturally, there are some politics involved, which I have absolutely no patience for.

Today was the first day we actually got down to doing some of the nuts & bolts stuff. Much of the work has to be done in certain orders as one system depends on another and you have to build the systems w/no dependencies first, blah blah blah…  We’ve already covered several key issues that would have affected the users adversely. I’m still excited about the project, just grumpy over the delays. Tomorrow is probably gonna be a wash as well but I have several things to review.

I’m hoping I don’t blow half the upcoming weekend recovering like I did last weekend. I blew the whole day last Saturday just trying to chill and recharge.

Survived

I survived my first week on the new schedule. Well, sort of. I’m completely run down today. I’d planned to schedule a bunch of stuff to do but I just don’t have it in me right now. So today is gonna be a lot of down time and sitting in front of the tv watching movies and catching up on tivo.

The biggest struggle has just been my schedule. I fought all week long to get up in a timely fashion and be on time. This week was super important as the developer/training team from the company was there teaching us how to change, set, and read system metrics for the software. The next few weeks are just the local team doing work and review. And to give you an idea of the scope, this effects not only the dispatchers but all of the police, fire, and parking/traffic employees who use the system. That is thousands of people and thousands of vehicles and equipment. Anyway, I’m getting off topic, I’m hoping next week I’ll be a little better with the schedule. I’m hopeful as today, the one day I wanted and could sleep in, I promptly woke up at a little after 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep. There is hope I guess that I am and will adjust.

Some things have had to give to make it possible though. I’ve barely even touched Facebook, twitter, or google this week. lol To be honest, I don’t even miss it. I popped in a couple times in moments of down time but otherwise, the interwebs have had to go on w/o me this past week. Even emails and text messages suffered. I get up, go to work, come home an spend quality time with Cooper, gym, a little down time, bed, and repeat.

I can say I made it to the gym every day I was supposed to this week! Granted my intensity suffered a bit but I went and worked out. And it could be a part of why I’m so drained today but I need to keep on a schedule otherwise I’ll end up blowing it off too often. And we can’t have that now can we!? And having not blown off the week schedule, I can move today’s normal workout to tomorrow w/o skipping anything.

As to the project itself, now that I have an idea of the project workload I can tell ya I have my work cut out for me. There is a lot of data entry that will need to happen on top of all the system changes that have to be uncovered, vetted, and possibly enacted into policy for our dept(s). Beforehand, I was thinking there was no way this would take 5 months. Now I’m not sure if that is a long enough. lol Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited and enjoy the work. This will effect us for at least a decade an having a chance to mold our software in advance to fit our needs is awesome. On top of that, I just like having my fingers in the pie, so to speak. And of course, my inner geek is thrilled to learn about the inner workings of not only the software but all the pieces of hardware and other systems that integrate and/or connect to our system. I find it completely fascinating. So far, no complaints on the project itself.

Anyway, don’t be sad/mad if my blog posts become sparse for awhile. Lord knows I always have something to rant about. But until I adapt better to the schedule, I have to prioritize real life over cyber life.

Wish me luck.

Days

I recently accepted a special assignment at work. It goes into effect late March. It has to do with our upcoming software upgrade. I’m very happy to do it. The only real down side is I’ll have to switch over to a day shift, 9-4. I’m already Mon-Fri so no changes there. I’m most definitely not a morning person so this will present a challenge. lol Gone (temporarily) will be the days of me waking up on my own. I’ll have to drag my sleeping bulk out of bed bright and early and show up during breakfast hours.

The assignment could last 4-5 months and will be a lot of tedious work. As mentioned, I’m excited because the changes are huge and will effect all of us for the next 20 years. City-govs don’t upgrade software often and this upgrade, while from the same vendor, is a huge deal. I’ve fought tooth and nail to get included in the process so it would be colossally stupid of me not to take this assignment. I’ll suck up my angst about being an early bird and do it. My computer and software knowledge will benefit, not only me, but all of my fellow co-workers. I also bring the user perspective to the table which is often overlooked by the engineers, developers, and sellers. We’ve already discovered several issues that would have been deal-breakers. So yeah, I’m gonna do it. Not even a question to me.

On the flip side, I’ll get a view of how the rest of the world lives! I’ll get to actually go out in the evenings and do stuff with friends during the week. I’ll be able to drive home in daylight hours. If I wanted, I could watch many of my shows live vs tivo’d. Obviously, I won’t but I could. hehehe. I can also go out on weeknight dates and dinners.

Cooper shouldn’t be too hard as the change only works out to 4 hours on his schedule. He’ll go out a little early in the morning and a little later in the afternoon. I don’t expect much problem there. *crossed fingers*

Don’t be surprised if my updates for the first week are a bit on the cranky side!

Upgrades

I was on day shift all last week for meetings with our primary software vendor. We are in the beginning stages of upgrading our software. While with the same vendor, the new system is built new from the ground up [1]new as in newer than we have now but still mature as a product and in many ways fundamentally different from what we have now. These type of upgrades occur only a few times in the life of a call-center. With emergent technologies, it is a necessary upgrade. We must do this or jump to a whole new vendor which would be a whole a lot more money than just an upgrade. And a new system is always rough on the end users. lol

The process itself wasn’t bad albeit a bit tedious at times. I had to flex my hours for the week to accommodate the vendor schedules. While a hassle, not the end of the world and well worth it considering the impact this will have on myself (and others) as the end users. Only 2 big surprises so far. The first surprise was a functionality problem. The new system while more robust created a more tedious format for one of our daily (and constantly repeated) functions. The architecture of the new system would not allow a fix no matter how much money we might have thrown at them. We were upset because this was not properly demonstrated during the initial investigative phase. Needless to say this caused some tense conversations. My big boss happened to be in the meeting at the time and was also not amused. But, while unfortunate and most definitely annoying, it was not a deal breaker. It does mean some training issues are involved and some headaches for the end users for the first few months.

The second surprise came from a sub-vendor regarding hardware upgrades and would be a total deal breaker. The software to control the hardware had to be modified and the modifications were just not going to work for us. The sub vendor was a bit miffed and seemed completely at a loss that what they had designed wouldn’t work for us. It’s always funny watching folks who don’t routinely use the software they create get frustrated when the users don’t like it. There are certainly two sides to that coin but at the end of the day the user-base should be happy, or at the very least still be able to do everything they need to do. In this scenario, it just so happens some of SF’s daily operations are unique and created a conflict. Naturally, the fix requires more than just some drop-in code. The interface will have to be almost completely rewritten. From my perspective, I see it as poor programming as the issue deals with API calls and they wrote an interface with no flexibility. It was all or nothing and as-is, it was nothing for us. lol The good news is the vendor wants the contract bad and will bend over backwards to make it work within the budget constraints. Granted some money issues will be discussed but that is way above my pay-grade. I think we’ll end up with a decent fix.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitching or even unhappy. I’m actually glad I got to be part of the process. Being a bit technology-inclined I had a higher-knowledge base to work from. And while I may not have understood some of the hardware terminology, I was never once lost in the process. Both my coworker and myself pointed out some real issues along the way and the main vendor was very responsive to our needs.

In the end, the project will probably remain on budget but just barely and there will be some serious code re-writes to accommodate what we need. The rewrites are going into the base code which means less headaches anytime a system patch or small upgrade is put out. As for us, there will be some definite training issues and adjustments but overall the upgrade will make life easier for us. The project won’t go live until early 2014 so still plenty of time to hammer out the details.

I was very happy my boss included us because often times a lot of very important decisions get made about software w/o the end-user being consulted. Our input helped avoid some major problems that would have been over-looked otherwise. This of course, saves us a lot of grief being stuck with a product that only partially meets our needs.

References

References
↑1 new as in newer than we have now but still mature as a product

Werk

I might have mentioned awhile back that my Union contract is up for renegotiation at work. It was actually up 2 years ago, but because of budget problems in the recent economic crisis it was rolled over 2 consecutive years.

As a preface, I make a decent wage and am grateful to be employed in such touch economic times.

In the last 3 years, I’ve given up significant chunks of raises and salary. Its going on year 4 since I’ve had a raise of any kind. This year I wasn’t overly optimistic about raises, I just didn’t want lose anything. My finances are stretched to the limit and just can’t take anymore cuts.

One of the biggest worries was our health plan contributions. My out of pocket expense would have gone from $200 to $420 a month had the proposal on the table passed. That dent alone would have caused some serious damage. I found out that proposal is off the table.

The 2nd issue was a flat out pay cut. Considering I’m already underpaid for my job classification, this was also of significant worry. Had the health plan changes and a pay-cut passed, I would have had to move out of San Francisco. I honestly don’t know how people who don’t make as much as I do make it.

Anyway, the two big issues are off the table. There is a dispute over my dept’s lunch hour and a raise that we’ve deferred twice now. Either way, I’m just happy to not have to move out of SF. If I ended up having to move, I wasn’t even sure I would have stayed in California. Thankfully, that is a decision I do not have to make now. I love living here but I have no intention of living in an area where I can’t live decent.

On a side rant, I can’t remember if I mentioned it but I’m still up for a promotion. The first two slots were filled by coworkers on the list above me. There is still a position coming up that will have to be filled. I have no idea when it will come to fruition.

Civil

I’m just home from taking the entrance exam for my promotion. The test was relatively straight-forward.  Sixty multiple choice questions asking basically silly answers. Most were easy to guess even with no knowledge whatsoever. There were only 3 that I wasn’t 100% of the best possible answer. Regardless, I am confident I did well. This was step 1. Step 2 is the oral interview. Step 1 & 2 determines where I rank on the list of candidates. Ranking high is good but not necessarily a guarantee.  The current position is ‘rule of the list’ which means the department can pick and choose from anyone on the list, regardless of where they rank, to fill vacant positions.

There is a dirty rumor circulating that the dept really wants me to promote.  Promotion would effectively eliminate one of their biggest opponents during disciplinary hearings. As the Chief Steward for our local union chapter, I am often called to rep/defend employees up for discipline/suspension. Not to sound arrogant, but I am very good at what I do. A dept with a history of inept management has had to step up their game considerably since I came along. lol If I were to promote, it would mean I’d have to resign my post as it would represent too much of a conflict of interest. I think I could handle the two jobs  objectively but even the appearance of partiality is not good.  It would be better for me to step aside. Frankly, I’m a bit tired of it anyway. I’ve been doing it for almost 7 years now and I’m more than a little burned out. 

While I’m flattered by the rumor, I don’t much stock in it. I think more astutely the department thru our interactions has come to respect and accept my abilities. I think this, more than anything, would be their reasoning for choosing me (if chosen). I am tenacious and thorough but I’m also fair-minded. I am a big believer that the punishment (if any) should fit the offense. Many civil service agencies follow the rule of progressive discipline. I am not a big fan of such a rule because some offenses can be worse than others and the idea that every offense has to be meted with continually severe punishment is retarded. You cannot manage people as a resource the same way you’d manage objects.

I’m still a bit ambivalent on the whole process. I’m committed to seeing it thru, regardless of the outcome though. Worst case, I can demote back to my position within 12 months w/no loss of seniority.

Stay

Well I’m back at work after being on a stay-cation last week. Money is tight and couldn’t really afford to do a whole lot. Regardless, I enjoyed the down time. I’ve been staggering my vacations evenly throughout the year and its really helping. Of course, it didn’t help that I strained my back on Tuesday. I was pretty much confined to the house for a couple days. I laid around and dozed courtesy of modern pharmacology. heehee

Speaking of work, I applied to be a supervisor a couple weeks ago. I figured it was time considering I’m often a go-to resource for others already. On the up side, it would be more money. On the down side, I’d probably lose my weekends off for awhile. All the supervisor shifts are 4-10’s as well. I’m not excited about that but it is what it is. However, there are enough slots turning over I’d probably have at least a partial weekend off within the year. If I get really lucky I could have a full weekend slot in less than 2 years.

I have up to a year to revert back to my current position without losing any seniority. The department starts testing and interviews soon. I’ll let ya know how it goes.